


A World More Full

by Energybeing



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: Dawn began to spin slowly, in a circle. She didn’t know why. No reason was required. As she spun, the breeze picked up, whistling through the leaves. Threaded through the rustling, just for a moment, was the sound she had heard in the night.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Buffy or Torchwood. Please don’t sue me for using them.
> 
> This story begins at the start of Buffy season 5 and at no particular point in the Torchwood timeline.

Dawn woke up suddenly, in the middle of the night. She wasn’t quite sure why. She hadn’t been having a bad dream – she hadn’t been dreaming at all, as far as she knew. It hadn’t been one of those all-too-frequent times when Buffy came home late after Slaying and accidentally woke her up.

She wasn’t sure why she suddenly woke up, but if she had to guess she would have put it down to a slight whirring sound that she heard as she woke, just on the edge of hearing. By the time she was fully awake, it was gone. Dawn listened, wondering if she’d imagined it, but everything was quiet. Even so, she was fairly certain that she had heard something. She wasn’t the kind of person who suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, and, unlike the rest of the Scoobies, she hadn’t had years of practice with Buffy.

Still, this was Sunnydale. If she even suspected that there was some kind of odd whirring sound in the middle of the night, chances were that there was, and some kind of demon was causing it. So Dawn turned on the light, hoping that there wasn’t going to be some kind of vast monster looming over her.

There wasn’t. There wasn’t anything. Her room was exactly as it had been before she’d gone to sleep. There was no hint of anything out of place.

Dawn wished that she could find that reassuring. Instead, all she could think about was that there might be something invisible, making a whirring sound. It hadn’t been a particularly threatening whirring sound – it had sounded like a large fly, or someone rapidly flicking through the pages of a book – but she was sure she had heard it, and she couldn’t see what had caused it.

But there was nothing she could do. It was late, and she was tired, and she had school in the morning. Even if Buffy was in, Dawn wasn’t about to go and get her so that the Slayer could root around and not find anything. Buffy already tried to keep Dawn away from that sort of thing, and Dawn wasn’t going to go to her just because she’d heard a noise in the dark. A noise which, now that she thought about it, she could well have imagined.

So she went back to sleep. After all, she was tired. By the time she woke up in the morning, she would probably have forgotten all about it.

~*~

She hadn’t.

When her alarm went off, telling her that it was time to go to school, Dawn just lay in bed. Normally, she’d get up and get ready – she liked school, and besides if she was slow there was a good chance that Buffy would be hogging the bathroom.

But she didn’t. She didn’t get up, not because she felt tired – although she did – but because she did this every day. Every day, Dawn got up, got ready, went to school. Sure, school wasn’t always the same thing, but that wasn’t the point. Even if some of the furnishings of her day were different, the main structure was the same. She got up at the same time, went to school at the same time, had lunch at the same time. Over and over again, day in, day out. She never really did anything.

She wondered if waking up in the night had thrown her rhythm off, or something. She did feel unusually tired. Dawn suspected that she would be fine if she’d had a good night’s sleep. In any case, once her day actually started and she got into the swing of things she’d probably be okay.

She wasn’t, not really. It was as though there was a part of her that was normal, a part which brushed her teeth and ate breakfast and chatted aimlessly with her mom, and there was another part, buried so deeply in her mind that she wasn’t even really aware that it was there. A part of her which just sat there and watched and wondered what the point was. There was nothing new here, nothing of substance. Just the same thing day in, day out. 

Not that Dawn was really aware of that. She just felt a little bit odd.

~*~

Joyce dropped Dawn off at school a little earlier than she normally did. She had some errands to run. Normally Dawn would have been fine with that – she could go the library and do some work, or speak to her friends if they were there. It wasn’t as if she was really early, just a few minutes.

So, when she said good bye to Joyce, she fully expected to go to the library. She decided at the last moment that she didn’t want to. It was a nice day, the sun was shining. There were trees. She’d stay outside for a little bit. After all, her friends weren’t there yet.

She walked under the trees. She didn’t think of anything much, beyond the fact that the sun felt nice on her skin. After a few moments, she stopped walking and spread her arms, turning her face up to the sky. She closed her eyes and felt the sun shining through her lids. If someone had asked her why she was doing that, she couldn’t have answered. She wasn’t thinking of anything. It was just something that she wanted to do, so she did it. It felt nice, and she didn’t get to spend nearly enough time outside. Sunnydale was too dangerous for that.

Dawn began to spin slowly, in a circle. She didn’t know why. No reason was required. 

As she spun, the breeze picked up, whistling through the leaves. Threaded through the rustling, just for a moment, was the sound she had heard in the night.


	2. Chapter Two

“Dawn.”

Dawn looked up in surprise to see that her teacher was looking at her sternly. Dawn frowned. She didn’t remember coming into class. She remembered the way the sun had felt on her skin, and the wind... but she didn’t remember what happened after that. She’d been outside, she was sure, and now suddenly she was here. “Hmmm?” She said, absently. She heard someone snort behind her.

“Dawn, you haven’t even opened your exercise book.”

“Right.” Dawn looked down. Sure enough, her book was in front of her, as was her pencil case. Her bag was set down by the side of the table. It certainly looked like she had come prepared for class, and normally she would have been. The only way this differed from all the other identical school days was that she didn’t remember doing it.

It was only when the teacher said “Are you feeling alright?” that Dawn realised that time was still passing and she hadn’t even moved to open the book.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Fine.” Dawn lifted her hand to open the book, and froze, staring. She didn’t stare at her hand, hovering slightly above the table. Nor did she stare at the table itself. She stared at the shadow her hand was making on the table.

In the shadow of her palm was a little humanoid figure. It was flat, two-dimensional, and seemed to be made of shadow. It was the same colour as her shadow, she didn’t understand how she could see it, how it didn’t blend in flawlessly, but it was there, definitely there.

It waved at her, and Dawn blinked. When she opened her eyes, it was gone, as though it had never been there.

“Umm, actually, I’m not feeling that great.” Dawn said slowly, not looking up, staring unblinkingly at the shadow her hand made. “Do you mind if I go see the nurse?”

“Of course not.”

~*~

Dawn was in the little room adjourning the nurse’s office. It was basically a place for people who felt a little bit ill, but not ill enough to go home, to sit quietly. Sometimes the nurse would give them Tylenol. 

She didn’t remember getting there. She didn’t remember walking down the hallway, speaking to nurse. Her bag was leaning against her leg, but she didn’t remember packing it.

She knew that this should be frightening. She was losing time. She was seeing things. But she couldn’t seem to work up the energy to be afraid. The best that she could do was feeling a little curious. She felt like a stranger watching everything from a vantage point somewhere outside of herself. She felt distant even from her own body, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to think that it even really _mattered_ that she was losing time.

The nurse came in, holding a glass of water. Instead of asking Dawn if she was allergic to Tylenol (or had she already asked that?), or even just handing Dawn the water, she sat down next to Dawn and said “I know what’s wrong.”

Dawn blinked in surprise. This was unprecedented behaviour for the nurse. Initiative in any of the medical personnel in Sunnydale was pretty much non-existent. “What is it?”

“You’ve got a bad case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Worse case I’ve ever seen.”

“Right.” Dawn said, not feeling even slightly sure what she could say in response to that.

Then the door opened, and there, almost masked by the sound, was that noise, that fluttering, whirring sound. The nurse came in through the door, and said “You’re not allergic to Tylenol, are you?”

Dawn looked to the side, where the nurse had been sitting a moment before. She wasn’t there now. There was no sign that she had ever been there.

Dawn was, however, holding a glass of water which she hadn’t been holding a few seconds earlier.

“No. No, I’m not allergic.”

~*~

There was something wrong with the clock.

It didn’t look like there was anything wrong. It looked like a standard clock, the sort of thing that one might see in any given school room. The hands moved normally, it didn’t seem to be accurate.

But it didn’t _sound_ right. The ticks weren’t in time with the second hand. Oh, sometimes they were, but then suddenly they wouldn’t come at all, even though the hand was moving, and then just as suddenly they’d come rapidly, one after the other, several in the space of a second.

It was really difficult to think. Dawn found that she was tracking the ticks, expectantly waiting for the next one to come, but it never quite seemed to be what she expected. The sound kept intruding on her thoughts.

She felt as though her brain was slowly turning to soup. There was nothing in it, nothing at all, just that relentlessly erratic ticking sound.

~*~

Eventually, Dawn went home. She didn’t tell Joyce or Buffy that she was feeling weird, or that she was seeing things. She didn’t want them to worry. After all, she wasn’t worrying.

She did go to bed early, though. She normally did anyway – it was a school night – but she didn’t go to bed so that she could get enough sleep. She went to bed because there was nothing to do, nothing but the endless repetition of schoolwork, food, meaningless conversation. Nothing ever happened, so she might as well sleep through it.

She woke to see Buffy opening her window from the outside. She didn’t come in – she just opened it and then sat there, perched on the ledge. “Hey. Want to go out for a patrol?”

Dawn frowned. Buffy never asked her that. Never. She was forbidden from all activities even tangentially related to Slaying. “Uh, why are you asking?”

Buffy shrugged. “You seemed a little off, and it’s a nice night. I thought you might want to go for a walk, you know. I promise, nothing will happen.”

It was a nice night. It had been nice all day, and her room did seem somewhat stuffy, even with the window open. Besides, if Buffy thought it was okay then Dawn wasn’t going to argue. “Sure, give me a minute to get dressed.”

~*~

“So.” Buffy said. “How are you doing?”

Dawn didn’t hesitate before answering. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Buffy said, looking at her intently.

“Sure I’m sure. Why? Don’t I seem fine?”

Buffy shrugged. “I’ve never worked out how you people are ever fine. How’d you not get bored?”

Dawn stopped walking. Buffy looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean, you people?”

“You know. People. People who just... stand still while time moves around you. How’d you not get bored, being one thing and moving one way? There’s so many other ways and... it’s not like your way is even interesting.”

“You’re not Buffy.”

“No, I’m not.” Buffy smiled, and even though it wasn’t Buffy, it still had her smile. “Neither are you.”

“What are you?” Dawn asked. She should feel afraid, she knew. She was out alone, in the dark, with someone who looked like her sister but clearly wasn’t. But even though she _knew_ she should be afraid, the emotional response just didn’t come. “Are you that... thing, I saw earlier, the shadow? And that fluttery noise?”

“That was us, yes.” Buffy’s eyes focused on something just behind Dawn. “But it’s time for us to go. We’ll speak to you in a little bit.”

Dawn turned around, but she was slow, so slow. Arms that were too strong to fight wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her side, and a hand pressed something against her face. Her eyes lost focus and everything went dark, but the last thing that she saw was Buffy shrinking down to a small, glowing humanoid with wings.


	3. Chapter Three

When Dawn woke up, she was cold. It probably had something to do with the fact that she was lying in a heap on cold, unadorned stone. She tried to remember what had happened, but her thoughts were interrupted by someone hauling her upright.

A vampire snarled in her face. Dawn didn’t recognise him, but when he put her on her feet and took a step back she realised that she _did_ recognise someone standing behind him.

“Hi!” Harmony said, waving cheerily.

Dawn winced, Harmony’s shrill voice giving her a headache. “Uh, what’s going on?”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Harmony said. Then she frowned. “Actually, no. You should worry. Because your sister is going to come looking for you, and we’ll kill you right in front of her, and then we’ll kill her.”

“Right.” Dawn said, rubbing her head. She should feel scared, she knew. She was in a room with vampires in it, and, unlike Spike, they wanted to kill her. But she didn’t. Not because she knew that Buffy was more than capable of coming in here, Slaying all these vampires and then freeing her. Of course, she was, but Dawn should have felt frightened anyway. But she didn’t. She felt as though she was watching from the back of her head, and she just wasn’t close enough to vampires for the threat to register. She felt a long way away.

Harmony opened her mouth to say something, and then stopped. Stopped completely. She didn’t move, didn’t blink. Of course, as a vampire, Harmony was capable of a level of stillness that no human could match, but it didn’t seem like she was being consciously still. It looked like she was frozen in place. So was the other vampire.

“So, there are two ways that this can go.” Buffy said conversationally. She hadn’t been there a second earlier, but now there was no indication that she had never not been there.

Dawn moved over to Harmony and waved her hand in front of the vampire’s face. There was no response. “What did you do to them?”

“Do to who?” Buffy said, confused.

“Harmony and the vampire.”

“Oh. Nothing. We’re just... I suppose that you might say that we’re outside of time at the moment.” Buffy said, as though that was the most commonplace thing in the world. “Time is different for us than it is for you.”

“What _are_ you?” Dawn said. “You look like Buffy, but you’re not. I’d say that you’re a demon, but... you’re doing something to my head, aren’t you? I should be scared, I should be... but it just isn’t happening. _Are_ you a demon?”

“No. We are... there isn’t really a word for us. We never named ourselves – we know what we are – and you people have called us so many things that there’s really no point listing them all. We aren’t demons. We aren’t humans. We just are.”

“But you are doing something to my head.” Dawn said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. We don’t want you to be scared of us. There’s no reason to be. We won’t hurt you, ever. We know that you are afraid of things that you don’t understand, and you understand so little, so we made sure that you aren’t afraid.” Buffy said simply. “We could stop, if you like. We promise that we aren’t altering your thoughts. Just making things seem a little distant.”

“I’m missing time.”

Buffy tilted her head. “Are you? Are you _really_ missing it? There’s so much of it and you... spend yours doing nothing much. Wouldn’t you skip it, if you had the choice? If you could skip all the boring bits, the bits were nothing happens? Are you sure you’re missing it?”

Dawn crossed her arms thoughtfully. “I see your point. Nevertheless, it’s my life. I’d rather not skip bits of it just because they aren’t very interesting.”

“Sure. It won’t happen again.” Buffy said. “And the other thing? The distance.”

Dawn shrugged. “I’m alright with that. I mean, I’d rather not have this conversation while I’m terrified, not if I can help it.”

“We will never do anything to scare you.”

“Pretty sure you’d be scary just by being there. You stop time, shapeshift, mess with people’s heads... not really something that people welcome with open arms.”

Buffy smiled. “Just as you say. In any case, with the vampires... there are two ways this can go.”

“Right.”

“The first is that we can get your sister. We can bring her here, and she can deal with them, and she can bring you home. Of course, then she’ll know about us. There will probably be some trouble for you.”

Dawn nodded. She could imagine what Buffy would say.

“The second is that we can deal with the vampires now, and we can take you home. We can make sure you get home without anyone even knowing that you’re gone.”

“So, just to check... when you say deal with, you mean kill, right?”

“Of course.” Buffy said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They want to hurt you.”

“Why do you care?”

“You interest us.” Buffy said simply. “There are reasons, but you don’t know them yet. We could tell you... we could show you, but you asked not to skip things.”

“Right.” Dawn said slowly. Then she grinned. “I can live with curiosity.”

“It’s your choice. We will do whatever you ask.”

“So, if I asked you to take me home and _not_ kill these two, you’d do that?”

“Yes.” Buffy said, without hesitation. “Although we’re not sure why you’d ask that.”

Dawn looked over at the vampires. “Yeah. I’m not really sure either.” She looked back at the thing that looked like Buffy, had her voice and her face and her expressions, and she said “Kill them.”

Harmony started coughing. The other vampire began scratching at his throat, retching. Harmony doubled over, and she looked like she was going to be sick – but she was a vampire, she couldn’t be sick.

She wasn’t being sick. Harmony straightened again, and there were branches coming out of her mouth, growing around her head. A tree had burst out through the ribcage of the other vampire, and he was screaming, but all that was coming out were some leaves.

Dawn watched as the trees grew rapidly, bursting out of the vampires, erupting up through the roof. They should be dead, should be dust, but they weren’t.

After a minute, the trees stopped growing, leaves rustling in the breeze far above Dawn’s head. She walked over to Harmony. The vampire couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything – there wasn’t much left of her, besides her head. The tree had grown through everything else.

But her eyes followed Dawn as she moved, and Dawn thought that she would probably be screaming if she could.

She touched Harmony’s head gingerly with her foot, and watched as the vampire finally crumbled into dust.

“Huh.”


	4. Chapter Four

Buffy wasn’t consistent.

She wouldn’t let Dawn out on patrol – she wouldn’t even let her research – but she _would_ take Dawn to the scene of a murder. Admittedly, the body was gone and the police had wrapped up whatever cursory investigation they carried out in cases like this, but still there had been a murder. The murder of the owner of a magic shop, no less. It definitely wasn’t the sort of thing that Buffy normally took Dawn along to.

Ostensibly, it was so that Buffy could find out what had actually happened to the shopkeeper and see if anything had been stolen, but Dawn was fairly certain that what would actually happen was that Giles would be examining whatever books the shop carried, and Buffy would be checking every five seconds to see if Dawn was actually doing her homework or was doing something she shouldn’t be. 

She was right, more or less. Buffy did make her do homework, and Giles did examine the books. Buffy, after a few seconds of idly flicking through a book, got up and examined a scented candle before putting it down with disgust. “By the way, Giles, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Do you know anything about some kind of creature that can make trees grow? Because, last night, I was out on patrol and there were these two trees – big trees – in one of the cemeteries. They’d grown right up through this crypt, and they weren’t there yesterday.”

Dawn froze. She waited anxiously to hear what Giles would say next. She might have imagined it, but she thought that she felt as though something else was paying attention as well.

“Hmm?” Giles replied absently. “Could be dryads.”

“Dryads?”

“Tree spirits. I wouldn’t think they'd be here, though, not in a town. They like woods and forests. And normally they prefer to guard trees rather than make new ones.”

“So probably not dryads then.”

Dawn raised her hand slightly, looking at the shadow beneath it. She couldn’t see anything there, but that didn’t really mean anything. “Are you dryads?” she whispered.

“No.” The voice came directly into ears, seemingly without there actually being anyone or anything saying the words. Then there was a laugh, high and free. It seemed as though they were amused by the idea.

“The tree grew up through a crypt?” Giles said, finally looking up from a book.

“Trees. Two trees, both sort of wrapped around each other.”

“Hmm.” Giles said, looking thoughtful. “I must say, I can’t immediately think of demons that _grow_ things. Destroy things, yes, and there are any number of things that can make things wither, but actually making them grow? Seems more like some kind of magic than a demon.” 

“I’m going to take a guess and say that you’re not witches either.” Dawn murmured.

“No.” The voice said again, and the laughter started again. With it came a gentle breeze – barely enough to ruffle the pages of Giles’ book, but still more than one would expect to find indoors.

“He’s not going to find anything about you, is he?” Dawn whispered.

“He might. We told you, there _are_ stories about us. There are records, tales about things we’ve done. He might find bits and pieces... but he won't even get close to the edge of what we are.”

“Dawnie?” Buffy said. “Did you say something?”

“No.” Dawn replied. And then she started laughing. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was because Buffy was standing there, and Giles was holding a book, and it was so incredibly mundane that it had become absurd, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

As she laughed, the breeze grew stronger, and stronger, and stronger, until it was a gale that blew things off shelves, made cabinets slide across the floor and forced Buffy and Giles against the wall. As Dawn laughed, it sounded like there were other people laughing at the same time, giggles and chuckles that cut right through the wind. The wind kept blowing, everything moving and shifting, and Dawn just sat there, laughing, not even a hair stirring.

Then she stopped, and the wind stopped with her. Everything dropped to the floor, and there was Buffy and Giles standing there, panting, a mixture of fear and concern on their faces. Dawn looked at them, at the room that looked as though a hurricane had gone through it, and she decided that she just didn’t want to deal with this. Not now. There would be questions, and she didn’t know the answers, and everything would be boring and then they’d make her do homework, and she just couldn’t do that, not now.

Besides, they were whispering to her.

“Take me away.” She said, and they did.

She was in a forest, somewhere. She wasn’t sure where, and it didn’t really matter. The sun was warm on her skin, and the breeze was gentle, and there were no walls around her. Just space and trees and birds singing.

A face appeared in a tree next to her. It looked like her own face, but lit up with a wide, childish grin. The face had eyes as green as new leaves, and skin made out of bark. There was even hair, thick and brown, which seemed to be made out of earth.

“They’ll come looking for me.” Dawn said. “They’ll have Willow do a spell or something.”

“They won’t find us.” The tree said. It sounded like her voice, if her voice was also the sound of wind whistling through leaves. “Nothing finds us, not if we don’t want it to.”

“They’ll find a way.” Dawn warned. “It’s what they do.”

The face in the tree tilted slightly. “Do you want them to? We can take you back, if you want. You can tell them that we were influencing you. It’s true, we are. We told you. We can stop, we can take you back. They can have you back and hunt for us, and we’ll be gone.”

“I...” Dawn paused. “I don’t want you to go. I’m... happy, here. The sun is shining and there’s... there’s nothing wrong, no demons, no threats, no _fear_. Everything is... so far away. I feel like I’m just watching things, and the only thing that’s actually real is the sun on my skin and the wind and... don’t go.”

“We will stay for as long as you want. You can spend centuries here, wandering in the forest, and when you go back only a second will have past. We can move through time however we want.”

“You keep saying we, but... there’s only one of you. I only ever see one. And what you said, ‘we can move through time however we want’... I’m not like you. I can’t do the things that you can do. I can’t spend centuries here, I don’t live that long, I don’t-“

“You could be one of us, if you want. We are offering you the chance. You could move through time with us, going wherever you want. You can be free, you can do anything you want. No more boredom, no more fear, just freedom.”

“I... can be like you? How?”

The face in the tree moved, and Dawn got the impression that it was shrugging. “Does it matter? How do people become people? They just do. If you want to be like us, then you can. Just like that.”

“But I...” Dawn paused. “I’d like to go back now.”

For a second, she thought that the face was going to ask why, but it didn’t. “Of course.”

And then she was back in the room that looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, and there was Buffy and Giles, and they both looked shocked.

“There are a few things that I need to tell you.”


	5. Chapter Five

“I asked for everyone to be here.” Dawn said. As she said it, she knew that it wasn’t what people were expecting. The people who were there were looking at her as though she might possibly grow a second head, or, more likely, start laughing as a gale picked up out of nowhere.

“Mom’s working.” Buffy replied. Dawn knew without asking that the real reason that Joyce was absent was the same reason that Dawn herself would be absent if the situation was reversed – Buffy didn’t want to worry her, didn’t want her involved. Dawn didn’t protest, not even when they whispered in her ear and asked her if she wanted them to get Joyce.

Instead, she simply told them what had been happening. They reacted pretty much as Dawn would have expected them to. Buffy’s face became expressionless, and she closed herself off, unwilling to let anyone know what she was feeling. Giles looked thoughtful, as though he was trying to remember something, but there was worry there too, worry he was trying to hide. Xander was also worried and wasn’t trying to hide it, while Anya just looked nonplussed. Willow looked actively nervous, as though she was expecting something to come bursting in at any second. Riley looked tense, as though he was about to burst into action. Tara seemed calm, and Dawn simply didn’t know her enough to be able to tell whether she was acting or not.

“Are they here?” Buffy asked, after she had finished. “Can we see them, speak to them?”

“Yes.” The voice wasn’t Dawn’s. It just came floating in on the breeze. “What would you like us to look like?”

“Whatever you really look like.” Buffy replied.

It seemed as though the air itself laughed, and then suddenly there was a figure there. It had a long, thin face and a mouth full of sharp pointed teeth. Its fingers were long, longer than they should have been, and they vaguely resembled the roots of trees. It had wings coming out of its back, gossamer thin and transparent, arranged in the same way as butterfly wings.

It was also entirely made out of green metal. The metal overlapped like scales, and when it moved it moved just like something alive, save for a faint whirring sound. It smiled, exposing pointed teeth. “It amuses us to come to you looking like something that is made when we are not. Soon you will understand, we think.”

Buffy stood instantly, grabbing a sword that had been hanging from the wall. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“Because you can’t.” The creature said simply. It crouched down and plunged its hand into the ground, effortlessly breaking through the floor boards. “You can’t kill us anymore than that can kill you.”

“You didn’t hit her.” Giles said, puzzled.

“We hit her shadow. Hit it hard enough that it would have killed her – but her shadow isn’t her, not really. What you are looking at is just our shadow. We exist throughout time and space... there is simply not enough of us here for you to hit. We cannot be stopped, not by you. You do not have the power.”

“I don’t understand – what do you want with Dawn? She said that you wanted to make her like you, that you’ve been messing with her head, but why? Why her?”

“She asked us not to say.”

“But I’m asking.”

“We heard. She asked us not to say.” The creature looked at Dawn, who said nothing. “We can say that she is not the first. There are others, spread throughout time. We ask them if they want to be like us. We show them the things that we can do, the things that we can see. We keep them safe, when we can.”

“What happens if they say no? If Dawn says no?”

“If they say no, we leave them be. If Dawn says no...” The creature turned to Dawn. “Do you want to know? You said that you don’t want to skip ahead.”

Dawn thought a moment. “Tell us.”

The creature turned back to Buffy. “You die.”

Riley leapt to his feet. “Don’t you dare threaten her!”

It wasn’t clear if the creature moved through the intervening space or it simply appeared in front of Riley. “We do not threaten. We do not warn. If we wanted her dead then we would kill her, and there is nothing that you could do to stop it, human. When she dies, you won’t even be here. You leave. You leave her. You know that there is a danger, something greater than she has ever faced, and you leave her even so. But it won’t be us that kill her.”

Giles cleared his throat. “I have a question.”

The creature remained where it was standing for a few more seconds, before moving back to stand by Dawn.

“You say that you’re spread throughout time. That you know the future.”

The creature nodded. “You call it the future. It has not happened yet for you, but for us all of time is spread before us.”

“Right, yes, exactly. So you’ve already seen what’s going to happen. You _know_ what’s going to happen. But you said if. _If_ Dawn says no. Which means that you’re not sure.”

The creature grinned. “Clever. So very clever.” It held up a hand, and suddenly there was a clock balanced on it. “This is time for you. It moves forward, and that is it.”

Then the room was full of clocks. Clocks everywhere, on every available surface. The surfaces themselves were clocks, even their clothes had working clocks on them. They moved forward, backward – some of them even had no hands on them at all. “This is time for us. We can be at any time, move in any direction, forward or back. To us, you are characters in a film. You move from beginning to end. We can come in at any moment, pause it, rewind, fast-forward – but what happens, happens. We can look at every moment of the film, for as long as we like... but the film is scripted. We cannot change it. We just watch from outside. So, yes, clever man. When we ask people to be like us, we know what they are going to say. When people hurt our chosen ones, we have revenge – for we cannot always save them, not if the script says otherwise. But Dawn is not like them. She is not scripted. She is... something else.”

“What am I?” Dawn said, softly.

“You are something that has been made which does not look as though it has been made.” The creature said, and then suddenly it looked like Dawn. “You look human, but you are not. Someone made you, made you look human and tried to write a new script... and now things are different, things are new. So we ask, and we do not know... will you come with us?”


	6. Chapter Six

Whatever Dawn might have said – and she was far from certain as to what that might be – was cut off by Willow waving a hand and muttering something under her breath. Dawn’s mouth closed; she couldn’t open it, no matter how hard she tried. Not that she tried very hard.

The creature’s head whipped around to face Willow, who looked back at it. She looked nervous, but she was trying to put a brave face on it. The creature moved towards her slowly, whirring sounds coming from beneath its metallic skin. It crouched down until it was in front of the witch, its long face close to hers. “We remember others who tried to hold us, tried to keep us human. Some locked us up, tried to hide us, but we found them, always found them, and we punished them for trying to keep us contained. We could destroy you for this. We could choke you on the air you breathe.”

“But you’re not going to.” Willow said. Although it looked very much as though she would like to get away from the creature, she didn’t move. She just kept staring at it. “You could kill us, you could take Dawn away and we’d never find her – but you won’t. You’re doing what she says, what she wants... and she doesn’t want to hurt us. She wants us here.”

“She forgives you, you know. Even when you’re high on magic, when you crash the car and break her arm. Even after you try to destroy the world. She forgives you, always forgives you.” The creature smiled, revealing pointed polished teeth. “We aren’t sure whether you forgive yourself. We know you. Don’t think that you know us.”

Willow paled, blood draining from her face as the creature spoke. She wanted to ask about the future, about what the creature had said – but she didn’t. “Don’t think that you know about _her_. You say that she isn’t scripted, that things can be different around her. Even if we ignore free will –“

The creature laughed, a harsh, grating noise that was closer to the sound of grating gears than mirth. “Free will? Yes, yes... you choose to do something, but we know what you choose. Even some of you people, moving linearly through time, even some of you know what’s going to come. If we know what your choice is going to be, if we’ve seen it, do you make a choice? You are crushed beneath the weight of the past and squeezed into the future. You think that you make a choice, but there is nothing _free_ about it. There was only ever going to be one choice that you were going to make.”

“Will’s right, though.” Buffy said suddenly. “Even if... if all of that is true, if... that still doesn’t mean that it will happen like that. Not if Dawn’s... whatever it is that you say she is.”

The creature leant back and sighed. “It’s... frustrating trying to explain things to you. We see it, see everything, as easily as you see us – but your language makes it so difficult to explain. Let us put it this way – Dawn acts like a human. Things will happen as they were always going to happen... until we came along, and changed things. We killed two vampires for threatening Dawn. Neither of them was going to die, not then, but because of Dawn, because things around her can go off-script, they did. But that’s just a little change. You’re still going to die. If we leave, then Dawn will still live like a human because that what she thinks she is, what she was made to think she is, and you all follow the script thinking that you’re free. But if she comes with us... we have no script. With her, we can do anything. She can do anything.”

“How do you know that you’re... not scripted?” Giles said. “Think about it. We have prophecies, here, and seers. They only tell us vague things, glimpses of things to come. What we think they mean isn’t always what it’s going to be. Even if you see everything as clearly as you say, if everything we do is... predestined, if we’re just puppets... that doesn’t mean that _you_ are free. You might have just as little choice as us. There might be some entity out there beyond even you. Maybe if you take Dawn you’ll still be puppets, but you just won’t know it. Maybe there’s someone who knows what Dawn’s going to do, even if you can’t. It doesn’t _matter_ if Dawn goes with you – I’m sorry, Buffy, but it doesn’t – because if there is no choice for us, no real choice, then there’s no choice for you either because you just react. You said that you just watch, that you can’t change anything. You’re just as powerless as we are... the difference is that you know it.”

“We are not powerless. We could plunge this world into an ice age if we chose. We could scour it with fire. We do not die, we do not fear – we are free, always free.”

“But you’re not, are you? You just... watch things. You’re not going to destroy the world because you didn’t. There’s nothing that you can do.”

“We can with her.”

“But you can’t know that. You said so yourself. You don’t know if Dawn is going to go with you – and neither do we. You just think that you’re free, that you’re going to be free – like us. We think that we’re free to choose, and you say that we’re not. Well, we say that you’re not!”

“Then what? If there is no freedom, not for anyone, if it’s all just an illusion, then she should _still_ come with us. We can offer her a world more full than any you can offer. There will be no fear, no pain. All of time will be hers. It doesn’t make any difference if she is scripted or not, because this offer is better.”

“I know what it’s like to be powerless.” Buffy said softly. “I know what it’s like to _know_ that you’re going to die, to know that the entire universe is bent on making it happen, that there’s no escape. I would rather not know. Even if I’m not free... I’d rather live with the illusion. That way, there’s hope. But if she goes with you, then she’ll spend eternity knowing that there’s nothing she can do. If she can change the script, there’s only going to be one way that she’ll change it, because she’s still Dawn. There might be an infinite amount of choices but there’s only going to be one that she’ll actually make.”

Buffy stood, walked over to Dawn, and enfolded her in a massive hug. Willow dropped the spell, and Dawn made her choice.

There was only ever going to be one choice that she could make.


End file.
